The season of cotton harvesting is a rather short one, occurring in the early Fall of each year. It is every farmer's goal to harvest as much cotton as possible before inclement weather prevents the harvesting and transportation of the cotton to a gin where it can be processed.
Presently, harvested cotton is compacted in the field into 32'.times.9' foot modules by special equipment known as module builders. The modules are then loaded onto a truck or tractor trailer having a movable bed to effectuate the loading and unloading of a module. The truck then transports the module to a gin where it is commonly stored in an open field usually situated about a high point and commonly called a module yard. The modules are unloaded from the truck and placed directly on the ground until the gin is ready for that particular module. While being stored in the module yard, the modules are exposed to the elements of nature causing portions of the modules to rot. Additionally, the bottom portion of the module is contaminated by the dirt and rocks upon which it rests.
When the gin is ready for the next module of cotton, a movable bed truck is sent to receive the module and transport it to the gin where it can be fed into the gin. This double-handling of cotton results in several undesirable effects. First, the modules tend to deform and lose their shape, the more they are handled, increasing the risk of the module breaking apart. Secondly, a portion of each module is left behind each time the module is loaded onto a truck having a movable bed. This results in a sizeable cumulative loss as easily discernable by the common sight of white patches on the ground in a module yard. Lastly, multiple loading and unloading of a module contributes to the knotting of cotton fibers by the chain beds of the truck which are believed to cause rib fires and gin stand problems.
As a practical matter, these inadequacies of the prior art cannot be solved by merely loading the movable bed trucks with modules when the cotton is harvested and leaving the modules on the trucks until the gin is ready for that module. This is because the cost of each truck would make it impractical to purchase the number of trucks necessary for the operation of the gin, not to mention the down time associated with breakdowns of the truck.
Compelled by these shortcomings in the industry, I invented and patented a system for handling cotton modules, disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,017,076, issued May 21, 1991. The system is known in the market place as "MOD-TRACK", wherein the modules are stored on trailers which utilize a network of railway tracks. Associated with the railway track is a transfer station for receiving modules from movable bed trucks and delivering them successively onto carts for either storing or transporting to the gin. Because the cotton is stored on carts and does not touch the ground, and the module is not double handled, a high quality yield results with minimal amounts of cotton lost.
The system disclosed in my '076 patent does require the dedication of land on which railway tracks may be laid, and therefore, lacks flexibility. Moreover, a railway system potentially limits the storage capacity of a gin to that portion of the track covered by a roofing apparatus.
Even with the railway track system and carts described in the '076 patent for preserving the quality and yield of the harvested cotton up to the point where it is fed into the gin, the gin is not fed cotton at its maximum rate, and the desirable efficiency is lost. To date, feeders are not capable of feeding the gin fast enough to maximize the capacity of most gins.
Currently in use are movable feeder heads in conjunction with suck pipes. Essentially, the movable feeder head consist of a dome-like structure containing rotating cylinders each having a plurality of radial fingers which, when the feeder head is passed over a module, disperses the cotton which is then sucked by the suck pipe into the incoming separator of the gin. Typically a module is placed on a flat concrete surface and the movable feeder head progressively moves over the module sitting on the surface as the fingers of the rotating cylinders disperse the cotton from the modules by downwardly striking on the module with the fingers extending from each cylinder.
The inherent deficiencies of such suck pipe feeders are substantially the same as described above in regard to the movable feeder head. However, a movable feeder head only moves in one direction, thus requiring an interval of time so that the feeder head may be reloaded with another module and the contaminated cotton not fed into the gin is swept away. Thus, a marked amount of cotton harvested by the farmer is lost due to the inefficiency of the feeder and the double handling of the module.
The movable feeder head will also leave wet spots in the cotton clumped together as it is sent to the incoming separator. Along with the wet spots of cotton, there will be rocks, mud and debris gathered by the module while being stored in the module yard. To operate a movable feeder head requires approximately two to three workers. Alternatively, some gins utilize hydraulically controlled suck pipes which pass over an unloaded module, sucking off portions of the module as they pass over the module.